Musée Marmottan Theft
Musée Marmottan, an often overlooked Paris museum, boasts the largest collection of Claude Monet paintings in the world. This made it the perfect target for thieves that wanted some of the most well known and valuable Impressionist paintings of all time.
Musée Marmottan
This museum is not as famous as the Louvre, Musée de l'Orangerie, or the Musée D’Orsay in Paris but its collection is no less impressive. Originally built as a hunting lodge, it was purchased by Jules Marmottan in 1882. He was an art and fine furniture collector and upon his death, he left the building to his son Paul Marmatton who only expanded on his father’s collection. When Paul died he left the building along with the large collection of art and furniture to the Académie des Beaux-Arts and they opened up the house as Musée Marmottan in 1934.
The collection expanded dramatically with the help of a few key donors. In 1957 Victorine Donop de Monchy donated her father’s collection of important Impressionist paintings. Her father, Dr. Georges de Bellio had been the doctor of Monet, Manet, Sisley, Pissarro, and Renoir and was a huge supporter of the early Impressionist movement. In 1966, Michel Monet, Claude Monet’s second son and only heir donated his entire collection of his father’s paintings to the museum. This included the work titled Impression, Sunrise where the Impressionist movement got its name. Finally, in 1985 Nelly Duhem, the adopted daughter of artist Henri Duhem, donated his large collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works to the museum, including even more Monets.
Pretty tempting if you’re in the market for some Impressionist paintings that you can never sell!
The Theft
On Sunday, October 27, 1985, five masked men burst into Musée Marmottan shortly after 10:00am. This is not one of those sneaky, under the cover of night robberies this one happened in broad daylight during visiting hours at the museum. The five men were carrying large-calibre weapons and two of them held the 9 security guards and 40 patrons at gunpoint while the other three raced around the museum taking paintings down from the walls. No one was hurt, apparently, the thieves just waved the guns around and ordered everyone to lie face down on the ground but what an ordeal.
Most of the works they took were unprotected, especially since the alarm system was turned off during the day, but they did break a protective glass case to access two works. They stole nine major pieces and altogether the heist took only 10 minutes. They made off with five Monets, two Renoirs, one Naruse, and one painting by Berthe Morisot, Eduard Manet’s sister-in-law. A museum spokesperson valued the paintings at $10 million. Below you can see all of the stolen paintings (except for the one by Naruse, I couldn’t find it anywhere).
From all accounts these thieves knew what they wanted, it seemed as though they had a list and knew where all the paintings were located ahead of time. “Marmottan curator Yves Brayer said the paintings were worth 'millions of dollars, at least,' and were 'very fragile works' that 'should be handled as little as possible'” (Colvin, 1985).
The thieves then placed these delicate paintings in the trunk of a grey car, double-parked outside the Museum, and successfully fled the scene.
The Investigation
The police were called immediately after the thieves left (since the alarm system was switched off it didn’t alert them sooner) and it quickly came to light that none of the stolen paintings were insured. Apparently, the museum had never insured any of their works because the cost of premiums was ruinous and they also knew that the paintings were unsellable so they thought no one would ever be motivated to steal them. Guess they were wrong about that.
A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said that “the thieves had probably stolen the artworks either for a private collector who wanted the works for his own pleasure, or possibly to blackmail the museum - or even France - to secure the paintings' return” (Miller, 1985). It’s important to note that that six other Impressionist masterpieces had been sent to New York for an exhibition only a few days before the robbery, so if the thieves had come earlier in the week their haul could have been even more valuable.
The police made a statement the night of the robbery saying that they had no clues or leads about the identities or whereabouts of the robbers. There were no other major announcements or leads in the case for the next two years.
Then in 1987, the Special Police Art Theft Unit headed by Commissioner Mireille Balestrazzi (one of the highest-ranking women in the national police force) took a trip to Japan to bring home four unrelated stolen paintings. While she was there one of her team members heard about a Japanese collector that had been considering buying one of the 9 Marmottan works although the transaction never ended up taking place.
Balestrazzi and her team dug into this lead a little more and leveraged some of their connections with the yakuza (Japan’s organized crime network). They learned that some members of the yakuza had been approached by representatives of the thieves but they refused to get involved. The team was close but it took them another three more years until they finally received a valuable tip-off.
The tipster pointed them towards Japanese gangster Shuinichi Fujikuma who had spent five years in a French prison for trafficking heroin. There he met Philippe Jamin and Youssef Khimoun who were, conveniently, part of an art syndicate. The three men used their time together in prison to plan the Marmottan heist, their main motivation was money, they committed this crime in the hopes of finding a buyer and making a huge profit. Again we have thieves not doing their homework and not understanding that famous paintings are too hot to sell on the black market. Either have a buyer lined up beforehand or steal something not famous.
After receiving this tip the French police raided Fujikuma’s home where they found a catalogue from Musée Marmottan with the stolen works circled. Can’t be more obvious than that. Even better, they found two paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot that had been stolen from a different museum in France in 1984. All of this ultimately led police to a small villa in Corsica on December 6, 1990. There they found all nine stolen paintings from Musée Marmottan along with an unidentified 17th-century painting.
The museum was overjoyed saying “it’s the best Christmas present we could ever have” (1990). There was a little damage to the works from humidity but all in all, they weren’t in bad shape and they were back on permanent display by the end of the month, now with beefed up security.
There is very little information I could find about the arrest of the thieves and their sentences, I know for sure that at least one was arrested but I really hope they all were. And there you have it, short and (for once) sweet!
Works Cited
Colvin, Marie. “Nine Paintings Stolen from the Marmottan Museum”. UPI. 1985. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/10/28/Nine-paintings-stolen-from-the-Marmottan-Museum-including-the/1889499323600/
Miller, Judith. “Nine Paintings Stolen in Paris by Five Gunmen”. The New York Times. 1985. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/28/arts/nine-paintings-stolen-in-paris-by-5-gunmen.html
“9 Artworks Stolen in Paris Returned”. The Washington Post. 1990. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/12/07/9-artworks-stolen-in-paris-returned/21e343da-fb3d-494b-b948-d96757775605/